LEADER BOARD

A managerial self-help manual provides a comprehensive plan for success—from hiring a team to eliciting a cohesive performance.

At the outset of this book, pharmaceutical executive Harris (From Authors to Entrepreneurs, 2015, etc.) announces an ambitious goal: Based on his study of the most successful businessmen of the last two decades, he aims to articulate a synoptic strategy for managerial achievement. Drawing on a 1965 article by psychologist Bruce Tuckman, the author parses the evolution of a team’s growth into four chief stages. “Forming” is the group’s embryonic stage, in which its members develop an initial sense of their mission and of the roles that each will assume in order to accomplish it. Inevitably, the author says, members will jockey with each other for power—a tumultuous phase that’s aptly named “storming.” If the group survives this phase, they move on to “norming,” in which the members come to accept their positions within the group and achieve a measure of harmony. Finally, the team reaches a state of unity during the fourth stage, “performing,” which allows them to transform themselves into a single “problem-solving instrument.” Harris furnishes a system for stewarding a team through these stages called “Team Performance Acceleration Principles,” which accessibly provides the author’s promised “actionable wisdom.” Harris splits his book into two parts, one instructional and one fictional, and the latter follows the plight of a character named Sam Lombardi, a marketing executive at a troubled pharmaceutical company who’s compelled to launch a new brand with breakneck speed. Sam helpfully illustrates the book’s principles while drawing generously from such business-oriented self-help manuals as John C. Maxwell’s The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player. The depth of Harris’ knowledge and expertise is unquestionable, and his counsel is consistently sensible and clear. His book is fairly brimming with charts and tools; for example, he breaks down job interviews, which he characterizes as a kind of dynamic “audition,” into 32 thoughtful questions. Although the advice flirts with banality at times—there’s a lot of emphasis on positive attitudes, for instance—the book will still serve as a valuable resource for new managers. However, Harris does have a tedious tendency to christen his strategies with acronyms, initialisms, or odd names that contribute little additional clarity. For example, “INNERviewing” is a means of capturing the personality profile of each team member and ensuring that they’re all properly aligned with the group’s mission. The tool is useful, and it’s grounded in a defensible insight, but its name makes it seem like a grade-school exercise. Indeed, at some points, the book seems to address the reader as if he or she were a child: “No Donkey-Konging! Just as in the classic arcade game, you must decide whether you will direct your new team from the top as the ‘boss’ (aka Donkey Kong), or as a collective Mario with the team goal of defeating Donkey Kong.” For adult executives who take themselves seriously, this tendency may become infuriating.

A thoughtful collection of managerial guidance hampered by patronizing prose.